POLICE HAVE UGLY CORNER PLANS

It is called the Ugly Corner, though there are other places in town that could fit the name.

It is more than a corner, though. The area takes in the 1800 and 1900 blocks of Martin Luther King Boulevard. It used to be a dropoff point for farmworkers. Now it's a dropoff point for many people who, for one reason or another, don't work.

"It's infested with crackheads," said Ed Phillips, a Pompano Beach insurance agent who grew up in nearby Carver Homes. "There are, at times, a lot of depressing people around there."

The Pompano Beach Police Department wants to change the Ugly Corner and, it hopes, the surrounding neighborhood. Armed with about $130,000 it obtained through a federal program, the police department plans to hire a community liaison officer who will be based at a new police substation on the Ugly Corner.

The liaison officer, who should be hired within the next month, will be someone from the Carver Homes or Golden Acres neighborhoods, directly north of Martin Luther King Boulevard.

Lt. Barry Lindquist said the department wants to put the substation in the center of what it considers to be one of the toughest neighborhoods in town.

"If we can accomplish something in Carver Homes we can do it anywhere,"

Lindquist said. "Carver Homes is a tough neighborhood, it's a neighborhood that needs to be helped."

The city has been talking about helping Carver Homes for years. Its development agency has finally lined up partial financing to begin building about 50 new homes in the neighborhood, at a cost of about $2.5 million, next year.

Lt. Dan Murray, who has spent much of his career on the streets in Carver Homes and other northwest neighborhoods, said the new liaison officer will be there to relieve police of repetitive calls and also to deal with residents in a way that police officers usually can't.

As an example, Murray said, the police department gets calls every day - some on the same day at the same time every week - about domestic disputes that require weekly visits from police.

"When we respond to the same address every Friday night, for the same reason, we need to think about how to solve that, so maybe that wife who wouldn't dream of filing charges or talking to the cops in the past will maybe talk to this new guy," Murray said.

Murray said the police liaison officer might suggest that the person enter a drug or alcohol treatment program, such as Alcoholics Anonymous. "You know, every cop would like to be like Andy Griffith and be able to sit down and settle every problem," Murray said.

Lindquist said the program doesn't mean the department is abandoning the concept of putting cops on the street to fight crime.

"Bad guys need to go to jail and they're going to continue to go to jail," Lindquist said. "But is there another way to solve the problem? That's what we're looking for."